GYWO 2018: Pledges & Requirements

GYWO is BACK for 2018! We’re starting our TENTH year-long writing challenge with ten pledges to help you challenge yourself, achieve your writing goals, and build a writing life. Because it’s our tenth year, we’re celebrating by adding a new type of pledge to fill a gap in our GYWO offerings. You can read more about it under Pledge Types.

Keep in mind that even our smallest goals require a serious commitment throughout the year. While it’s okay for writers to be behind or even entirely miss their pledge goal, we want you to pick a pledge that could be achievable for you and will keep you writing all year long. Before choosing your pledge, please take note of the few requirements we have of our members, and carefully consider which of the ten pledges you'd like to choose. You may only choose one pledge.

Membership Requirements & Information

Given that this is a year-long challenge, we expect members to be writing throughout the year. While obviously some months will be better than others, and life can toss roadblocks into writing plans, we are here to encourage you to develop a consistent writing life despite these distractions.

There are a handful of requirements to joining GYWO.

You must have an account on Dreamwidth or OpenID. (If you are a previous member using a new name or new service, please let us know.)

Sign up using ONE account from any of the above mentioned services. (You may use a writing journal instead of your personal one, just please sign up with only one. You’ll be asked for your username on other services so we can allow you access everywhere.)

All members must participate in the monthly check-ins. Each month members provide their current year-to-date (YTD) word count or day count totals to the moderators. You will only ever be required to provide numbers; sharing what is written is completely optional.

At the March check-in, members must have written some number of words toward their goal or worked some number of days toward their goal.

The community’s pledge progress is used by the moderators to determine trends in the group and help gauge when additional encouragement may be needed. We also keep a backup of all members' word counts or day counts, available in a spreadsheet for members' viewing.

If you do not check in for a month, it will be noted; three months in a row without checking in will result in your removal from the community. A habit of missing check-ins will result in additional warnings and may result in removal. Please see the information on Monthly Check-ins for further details.

Since check-ins are so important, we strongly recommend you track the !monthly check-in tag at the community, or make note on your personal calendar that check-ins are always open during the first 5 days of a month. Additionally, if you know you will be unavailable during the time frame for an upcoming check-in, you can request to be excused (information available on the website).

Other community information, including answers to questions you may have, is available on our external website. These include:

After reading these, please let us know in this post if you have any additional questions you need answered before making your pledge.

Pledge Types

Starting in 2018, GYWO offers two kinds of pledges dedicated to helping you increase your productivity and prioritize your writing life.

Word Count Pledges

Word Count Pledges are GYWO Classic, focusing you on writing a certain number of words over the course of the year. Members who pledge for 2018 may use any number of writing projects to add to their word count over the year. Projects may include (among other things) novels, fanfics, poems, songs, and essays. You may count any words you write, regardless of if you edited them out of your final draft. Think of this as a way to measure the amount of work you put into your writing each year. You can find out more information about what words count by visiting GYWO.net.

Word Count Pledges start at 75,000 words and go up to 500,000 words, with seven incremental pledge levels. Think carefully before choosing one because you won’t be able to change your pledge during the year.

Habit Pledges

Habit Pledges are designed to help you build a writing habit by counting the number of days you spend on writing activities. For the purposes of these pledges, writing activities must have a recorded creative element such as drafting or revising, outlining or brainstorming on paper, writing query letters or synopses, or completing world building or character sheets. Instead of focusing on word count production, these pledges offer a more holistic take on the writing life. You can find out more information about habit pledge activities by visiting GYWO.net.

Habit Pledges start at 120 days and go up to 350 days, with three incremental pledge levels. Think carefully before choosing one because you won’t be able to change your pledge during the year.

Mutually Exclusive

You may choose only ONE pledge for the purposes of official tracking at GYWO. If you are interested in both a Word Count Pledge and a Habit Pledge, we invite you to personally and unofficially track one of the pledges—it will give you a basis for choosing a pledge in future years.

Pledging

If you pledged in a previous year, and didn't meet your goal, quit, or were removed from the comm for missing check-ins, you are welcome to pledge again.

When choosing your pledge, consider your personal writing habits and what you find most motivating. Will hitting your word count goal early help propel you to keep writing through the remainder of the year? Do you need a major challenge to keep you on pace? Have you surpassed smaller goals in previous years and need more of a challenge? Are you already writing multiple days a week? Make sure the pledge you make is one that will motivate you.

To make your pledge, there are two steps to complete: Pledge & Request.

Step 1: PledgeFollow the link for your pledge to the appropriate post and leave a comment using the journal you intend to have join the community. Cut and paste the form at the pledge post to ensure you’re leaving all of the information needed.

Word Count Pledges

75K words, the Light level, approximately 6.25K words/month, 205 words/day (reserved for members with significant impact to their writing time)

Reminders: Sign up with only ONE account. You may sign up using Dreamwidth or OpenID. You may use a fic/writing journal instead of your personal one. Include your username on the other platforms requested to have access everywhere. If you have previously participated under a different username (or on Livejournal), please let us know so we can track our repeat members.

Step 2: RequestOnce you have made your pledge, please request to join the community. We’ll approve memberships on January 1st (as we still have 2017 members scrambling to hit their goals!), but we'll hold you in the queue. If you are a current member, you won’t need to request as you are already a member of the community.

If you’re concerned we didn’t receive your pledge: We will be updating the 2018 list in the profile as new members are verified. Please give us at least twenty-four hours from submitting your pledge before inquiring about your status. (Over the Christmas holiday we will not be vetting pledges, so please check back on Dec 27th.)

IMPORTANT: Anyone requesting to join the community who has not made a pledge will not be added. To ensure you are not left out, make your pledge first, then request to join.

You have until January 15, 2018 to make your pledge. After that time you will NOT be able to change your pledge or join the challenge, so think carefully before committing.

Promotion

If you want to share GYWO with your friends, please feel free to use either of the codes provided to let them know you’ll be writing a lot in 2018 and you think they should too.

[img: notebook and pen on wooden desktop with "GYWO 2018" printed in large white letters with a black shadow. under that, "writing decathlon" in handwritten white letters with a black shadow.]GetYourWordsOut: Year Ten!Pledges & Requirements | GYWO.net

[img: notebook paper with "GYWO 2018" printed in large black letters with a blue shadow. under that, "writing decathlon" in handwritten black letters with an orange shadow.]GetYourWordsOut: Year Ten!Pledges & Requirements | GYWO.net

Hopefully that covers everything you need to know about what is required of members, what the pledge options are, and how to make your pledge. Questions are welcome in this post! We hope to see your pledge soon!

2017 members need to pledge for 2018—we have to know which pledge you want for 2018!

If you're already a member of the community, you can't request membership, but your pledge means that we won't remove you on Jan 1. If you're adding an account for our LJ mirror community, request membership there or accept the invitation we send—it's a lot easier for us to have current members already in both communities.

If you previously participated under another username, make sure to tell us that previous username. If you're not sure of the name, make a best guess at the username and we'll check our records to confirm with you.

We encourage everyone who finishes early to keep writing and keep tracking. We don't move you into a new pledge, but at that point you can set your own goal and use the community to help keep you motivated and on track. We’ve had members pledge 200K and end with over 400K! So really, we encourage you to keep writing and see just how much you can do.

Absolutely nothing. This is a difficult challenge and not everyone will finish their pledges. What we hope is that this challenge will encourage you to write more often throughout the year and help you prioritize your writing time. If you don’t meet your pledge this year, you’re welcome to try again next year.

If you're referring to the Trackers made available to members, we're actually working on a NEW tracker specific to Habit Pledges. Both trackers, though, will have capabilities of tracking the other type of pledge, so you can still keep an eye on your word count (if you like), or you can see how many days you've written over the year while focusing on your Word Count Pledge.

This is exactly the info I came looking for, thank you! I'm debating between a word count pledge and a habit pledge, and I'm hoping that seeing the what the trackers look like will make the decision easier

The Word Count Tracker will look almost the same. The only change will be on the Get Started tab where we'll have a new column that shows the number of days you wrote each month.

The Habit Tracker will be very similar except there's a cell where you say "yes/no" for if you wrote for the day that has nothing to do with word count. Next to it are still three columns where you can track up to three projects, just like on the current Word Count Tracker.

We're trying to keep the look and functionality very similar so that anyone switching to a Habit Pledge can have an almost seamless transition.

Also, if you're still undecided on Dec 30th, sign up with a pledge, just so we keep you in the community. You can change your pledge until Jan 15. All 2017 members who are unpledged are removed at midnight when the year changes.

FYI--the image on the promo piece links to the Livejournal account. Since you're trying to transition over to DW, I didn't know if this was a ghost or purposeful, but I thought I should mention it just in case :)

(I'm super excited for next year! I've been stalking the DW group for pledges to go up XD)

I have a question about countable words! When I’m not writing fiction, one of the things I like to do is make websites for things I’m a fan of, usually fictional characters and relationships. The content more or lets fits the definition you have under nonfiction about meta that’s researched and polished — it usually takes me a few weeks to make a site, and the result tends to be between 5,000-15,000 words, though it can go much higher. Here’s a sample.

I figure I’m okay to count these, but thought I’d ask since it’s not exactly common. If I can’t count them, that’s okay; I have more than enough fiction writing planned to get me through 2018!

If you think it fits the definition of researched and polished meta, go for it! I personally would skip counting words on things like homepages or that are information about the site (for example, I don't count the words I write for the GYWO website or for community informational posts like this one or the posts for the start of the year). But if you've read the guidelines, we trust your decision.

You still need to check in monthly, but how your word count (or day count) increases is up to you. We encourage members to write monthly (and have events to aid in that), but everyone's writing process is different and we fully embrace that.

Hello! I've participated on Livejournal before with a different username, so my question is in the future when I check in, do I just use this account/username and that'll do? Or do you need me to add my old username as well? Sorry I'm a bit confused *hides face*

Whichever account you signed up with is your GYWO username (this is also the name we'll have listed in the profile). So, for you, you signed up using LJ, so that's the name you'll use for check-ins. If you want to switch to DW (at any time during the year), just let the mods know.

So I hate to be that person, and if the answer is no, no worries, but I just tallied up my 2017 words and I hit 350K, which was a surprise. Anyway, this was to be a challenge to bring me back to my previous writing levels, but it appears I'm there already, so can I go up a category or am I locked into the current one?

You can change it up until Jan 15. To change it, reply to the correct pledge post and fill out the comment form. Include that you are changing your pledge. It's also helpful if you say which pledge you're changing from.